RUSS LANGLEY: Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Lieutenant, Honoured guests, Graduands of 2023 and all of you here today, it gives me great pleasure to be presenting Isy Suttie for the award of Honorary Master of the University.
Isy is a musical comedian, actress, writer and podcaster, well known for her TV roles in Peep Show and Man Down.
She was born in Hull and raised in the picturesque town of Matlock in Derbyshire where she attended the local Highfields School. She was a member of the Bakewell Youth Theatre, which was a big influence on her career, and she acted in many plays in and around Derbyshire, including Buster's Last Stand and By The Baseball Ground at Derby Playhouse.
Isy went to Guildford School of Acting, graduating in 2000 with first class honours in Acting. She started performing stand-up comedy in 2002, and quickly fell in love with it, going on to perform in sketch shows and then her own musical stand-up shows at the Edinburgh Festival. Her shows are often set in and inspired by Matlock, and she is fascinated by the way small things can end up being a very big deal in a small town. Some of her funniest material comes from letters from her Mum, which begin with phrases like, "A funny thing happened in the fish and chip shop..."
She continued to perform stand-up alongside TV roles, acting as Dobby in Channel 4's Peep Show and playing a variety of other roles in series including Channel 4's Damned, Shameless and Man Down, and BBC's Whites. Her 2010 stand-up show Pearl and Dave was turned into a BBC Radio 4 series, Isy Suttie's Love Letters, which won a Gold Sony Award, and she writes for and regularly appears in various shows on BBC Radio 4. She has also appeared on many popular TV panel shows including QI, Would I Lie To You and 8 out of 10 Cats. Her Memoir, The Actual One, was published in 2016 and she recently published her first novel, Jane is Trying, which is set in the Peak District. In 2021, she hosted her own podcast, The Things We Do For Love, where she interviewed guests about their love lives and various other escapades.
Isy has been nominated three times for a British Comedy Award for Best Female Newcomer in 2008, Female Breathrough Artist in 2011 and Best Female TV Comic in 2014 and she has recently appeared in The Baby, a new comedy/horror series for Sky and HBO. Last year she toured her stand-up show, Jackpot.
Isy is a proud ambassador for Derbyshire. She has an enduring affection for the town where she lived from the age of 6 to 18 which had a profound effect on her personally and creatively. In 2016, she supported and backed the restoration of Matlock Bath's Grand Pavilion, donating the proceeds of her show's ticket sales to The Grand Pavilion charity.
Isy is here today with her friend Caroline. Her partner Owain, and two young children are celebrating back at home in South London.
Chancellor, in recognition of her distinction in the field of comedy and her support for the region, we are delighted to award Isy Suttie the Honorary Degree of Master of the University.
ISY SUTTIE: Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Lieutenant, Honoured guests, Graduands of 2023 and all our guests here today, I am truly honoured to be accepting this award of Honorary Master of the University here in Derby, it means so so much to me and my family that I'm here. I'm also so proud to be from Derbyshire and it's the only place I feel truly at home.
All of you should be so proud of yourselves, you've worked through a pandemic and all its repercussions, you chose a subject and committed to it and there will have been times of pure joy and of lonely doubt, times of breakthrough and frustration and you're here now you've done it. From that very first day when you think "Oh my God no one's going to talk to me, I've got literally nothing to say to anyone, maybe I should just do an Australian accent, would that help?" and you managed to go up to someone and blurt out "I like your top", you got through it, you made friends, you'll have some of those friends for the rest of your life and you also formed a bond with your subject which is so important. It's one thing starting a course and it's another thing sticking with it through thick and thin and you've done it.
I graduated with a BA from Guildford School of Acting in 2000; at the end of the third year, we did a showcase for agents, it was a really big deal, it was our only chance to get signed up by an agency and it was very competitive. We had to lay out paper CVs because it was before the internet and all the agents came afterwards and looked through the CVs and took the CVs of actors that they liked in the showcase, I asked my friend Amy to lay out between 15 and 20 of my CVs and not tell me how many. After the agents had left, I went over and counted my CVs that were left and there were 17 and I thought well maybe three have gone and I made Amy tell me how many of my CVs she put out and it was 17. So I left college with no agent and no money.
I worked as many things as I could to make ends meet, I worked as a cleaner, as a leafleteer, I handed out energy bars, I ate loads of energy bars, I worked in so many call centres, I have dreams about selling printers to office managers but I never let go of a belief that one day I could make a living from writing and performing. I sent 50 CVs a week to agents and theatre companies and gigged almost every night for free. There was so much rejection along the way including at one Edinburgh Festival I got paid 50 pounds to leave the stage because it was going so badly but slowly I began to find my writing voice and develop my comedy act and that led to radio and TV work. It was a very long game and I didn't leave my day job until seven years after I graduated.
Some of you will be going into what we call proper jobs which is brilliant and some of you will be freelance which is what I'm used to. One of the most useful things I learned early on was to always have the next gig or project booked in even if it's something that you're doing for free so if what you're working on doesn't go quite to plan, you can immediately apply what's useful from that feedback to your next thing and it also gives you something to focus on so you don't feel so at the mercy of a precarious career.
Hold on to what makes you excited, you're right at the start of your careers, it's such an amazing, brilliant day, you should be so proud of yourself, cherish what you felt joyful about during your courses and what's made you feel most like you enrich who you are as a person.
Lastly, take risks and be vulnerable, if something scares you just jump off that diving board, any movement is better than stagnation and if it doesn't turn out the way you imagined, it might not be for you but you will always learn something that will serve you and you might make an unexpected 50 quid like I did in Edinburgh.
I'd like to dedicate my award to my dad who passed away in 2011 but who completed a degree, a Masters in Chemistry, and who valued hard work alongside having a laugh more than anyone. Well done all of you, you should be so proud of yourselves. Thank you very much.